Results 1 - 10
of
71
OpenRAVE: A Planning Architecture for Autonomous Robotics
, 2008
"... One of the challenges in developing real-world autonomous robots is the need for integrating and rigorously testing high-level scripting, motion planning, perception, and control algorithms. For this purpose, we introduce an open-source cross-platform software architecture called OpenRAVE, the Open ..."
Abstract
-
Cited by 94 (5 self)
- Add to MetaCart
(Show Context)
One of the challenges in developing real-world autonomous robots is the need for integrating and rigorously testing high-level scripting, motion planning, perception, and control algorithms. For this purpose, we introduce an open-source cross-platform software architecture called OpenRAVE, the Open Robotics and Animation Virtual Environment. OpenRAVE is targeted for real-world autonomous robot applications, and includes a seamless integration of 3-D simulation, visualization, planning, scripting and control. A plugin architecture allows users to easily write custom controllers or extend functionality. With OpenRAVE plugins, any planning algorithm, robot controller, or sensing subsystem can be distributed and dynamically loaded at run-time, which frees developers from struggling with monolithic code-bases. Users of OpenRAVE can concentrate on the development of planning and scripting aspects of a problem without having to explicitly manage the details of robot kinematics and dynamics, collision detection, world updates, and robot control. The OpenRAVE architecture provides a flexible interface that can be used in conjunction with other popular robotics packages such as Player and ROS because it is focused on autonomous motion planning and high-level scripting rather than low-level control and message protocols. OpenRAVE also supports a powerful network scripting environment which makes it simple to control and monitor robots and change execution flow during run-time. One of the key advantages of open component architectures is that they enable the robotics research community to easily share and compare algorithms.
Towards Long-Lived Robot Genes
- Journal of Robotics and Autonomous Systems
, 2008
"... Robot projects are often evolutionary dead ends, with the software and hardware they produce disappearing without trace afterwards. Common causes include depen-dencies on uncommon or obsolete devices or libraries, and dispersion of an already small group of users. In humanoid robotics, a small field ..."
Abstract
-
Cited by 50 (11 self)
- Add to MetaCart
(Show Context)
Robot projects are often evolutionary dead ends, with the software and hardware they produce disappearing without trace afterwards. Common causes include depen-dencies on uncommon or obsolete devices or libraries, and dispersion of an already small group of users. In humanoid robotics, a small field with an avid appetite for novel devices, we experience a great deal of “churn ” of this nature. In this paper, we explore how best to connect our software with the mainstream, so that it can be more stable and long-lasting, without compromising our ability to constantly change our sensors, actuators, processors, and networks. We also look at how to encourage the propagation and evolution of hardware designs, so that we can start to build up a “gene-pool ” of material to draw upon for new projects. We advance on two fronts, software and hardware. Building on our robot software architecture YARP [11], we focus on how to organize communication between sen-sors, processors, and actuators so that loose coupling is encouraged, making grad-ual system evolution much easier. We develop a model of communication that is transport-neutral, so that data flow is decoupled from the details of the underly-ing networks and protocols in use (allowing several to be used simultaneously, key to smooth evolution). We develop a methodology for interfacing with devices (sen-sors, actuators, etc.) that again encourages loose coupling and can make changes in devices less disruptive. At the same time, we are concerned with the problem of incompatible architectures and frameworks, and discuss how we work around this. We emphasize the strategic utility of the Free Software social contract [15] to soft-ware development for small communities with idiosyncratic requirements. We also work to expand our community by releasing the design of our ICub humanoid [23] under a free and open license, and funding development using this platform. Key words: humanoid robotics, free software, device drivers, ICub humanoid, YARP
Exerting Human Control Over Decentralized Robot Swarms
"... Abstract—Robot swarms are capable of performing tasks with robustness and flexibility using only local interactions between the agents. Such a system can lead to emergent behavior that is often desirable, but difficult to control and manipulate postdesign. These properties make the real-time control ..."
Abstract
-
Cited by 19 (0 self)
- Add to MetaCart
(Show Context)
Abstract—Robot swarms are capable of performing tasks with robustness and flexibility using only local interactions between the agents. Such a system can lead to emergent behavior that is often desirable, but difficult to control and manipulate postdesign. These properties make the real-time control of swarms by a human operator challenging—a problem that has not been adequately addressed in the literature. In this paper we present preliminary work on two possible forms of control: top-down control of global swarm characteristics and bottom-up control by influencing a subset of the swarm members. We present learning methods to address each of these. The first method uses instance-based learning to produce a generalized model from a sampling of the parameter space and global characteristics for specific situations. The second method uses evolutionary learning to learn placement and parameterization of virtual agents that can influence the robots in the swarm. Finally we show how these methods generalize and can be used by a human operator to dynamically control a swarm in real time. I.
OpenRDK: a modular framework for robotics software development
"... Abstract — In this paper we conduct an analysis of existing frameworks for robot software development and we present OpenRDK, a modular framework focused on rapid development of distributed robotic systems. It has been designed following users ’ advice and has been in use within our group for severa ..."
Abstract
-
Cited by 15 (9 self)
- Add to MetaCart
(Show Context)
Abstract — In this paper we conduct an analysis of existing frameworks for robot software development and we present OpenRDK, a modular framework focused on rapid development of distributed robotic systems. It has been designed following users ’ advice and has been in use within our group for several years. By now OpenRDK has been successfully applied in diverse applications with heterogeneous robots and as we believe it is fruitfully usable by others we are releasing it as open source. I.
A middleware for intelligent environments and the internet of things
- In Ubiquitous Intelligence and Computing
, 2010
"... Abstract. Interdisciplinary research from the domains of pervasive computing or ubiquitous computing, computer-human-interaction and computer science has led to the development of many intelligent environments, either on lab scale or as live in laboratories. While several middleware have been develo ..."
Abstract
-
Cited by 14 (10 self)
- Add to MetaCart
(Show Context)
Abstract. Interdisciplinary research from the domains of pervasive computing or ubiquitous computing, computer-human-interaction and computer science has led to the development of many intelligent environments, either on lab scale or as live in laboratories. While several middleware have been developed in this field, no standard middleware for intelligent environments or ubiquitous computing has evolved yet. We consider the lack of a de-facto standard middleware for distributed sensor-actuator environments as one of the key issues limiting research on intelligent environment and the proliferation of intelligent environments from research environments to their deployment in our everyday lives. In addition, we expect the advent of personal robotics for health care and ambient assisted living scenarios in the context of ubiquitous computing in the close future. In this paper, we report on the successful application of a robotic middleware as glue between sensors, actuators and services and its application in a deployed example scenario. Thereby, we verify by examples the applicability of robotic middleware for complex ubiquitous computing environments. To foster re-use and potential community-adoption, we share our source code, documentation and data sets (in the future) via
ACT-R/E: An Embodied Cognitive Architecture for Human Robot Interaction.
- Journal of Human-Robot Interaction
, 2013
"... We present ACT-R/E (Adaptive Character of Thought-Rational / Embodied), a cognitive architecture for human-robot interaction. Our reason for using ACT-R/E is two-fold. First, ACT-R/E enables researchers to build good embodied models of people to understand how and why people think the way they do. ..."
Abstract
-
Cited by 13 (1 self)
- Add to MetaCart
(Show Context)
We present ACT-R/E (Adaptive Character of Thought-Rational / Embodied), a cognitive architecture for human-robot interaction. Our reason for using ACT-R/E is two-fold. First, ACT-R/E enables researchers to build good embodied models of people to understand how and why people think the way they do. Then, we leverage that knowledge of people by using it to predict what a person will do in different situations; e.g., that a person may forget something and may need to be reminded or that a person cannot see everything the robot sees. We also discuss methods of how to evaluate a cognitive architecture and show numerous empirically validated examples of ACT-R/E models.
A player/stage system for context-aware intelligent environments
- Proceedings of UbiSys 6
, 2006
"... Abstract. The effective development and deployment of complex and heterogeneous ubiquitous computing applications is hindered by the lack of a comprehensive middleware infrastructure: interfaces to sensors are company specific and sometimes even product specific. Typically, these interfaces also do ..."
Abstract
-
Cited by 13 (5 self)
- Add to MetaCart
(Show Context)
Abstract. The effective development and deployment of complex and heterogeneous ubiquitous computing applications is hindered by the lack of a comprehensive middleware infrastructure: interfaces to sensors are company specific and sometimes even product specific. Typically, these interfaces also do not sustain the development of robust systems that make use of sensor data fusion. In this paper, we propose the use of Player/Stage, a middleware commonly used as a de facto standard by the robotics community, as the backbone of a heterogeneous ubiquitous system. Player/Stage offers many features needed in ubicomp, mostly because dealing with uncertainty and many different sensor and actuator systems has been a long term problem in robotics as well. We emphasize they key features of the Player/Stage project, and show how ubicomp devices can be integrated into the system, as well as how existing devices can be used. Additionally, we present our sensor-enabled AwareKitchen environment which makes use of automatic data analysis algorithms integrated as drivers in the Player/Stage platform, of which we are active developers. 1
Real-time CAD Model Matching for Mobile Manipulation and Grasping
"... Abstract — Humanoid robotic assistants need capable and comprehensive perception systems that enable them to perform complex manipulation and grasping tasks. This requires the identification and recognition of supporting planes and objects in the world, together with their precise 3D pose. In this p ..."
Abstract
-
Cited by 13 (9 self)
- Add to MetaCart
(Show Context)
Abstract — Humanoid robotic assistants need capable and comprehensive perception systems that enable them to perform complex manipulation and grasping tasks. This requires the identification and recognition of supporting planes and objects in the world, together with their precise 3D pose. In this paper, we propose a 3D perception system architecture that can robustly fit CAD models in cluttered table setting scenes for the purpose of grasping with a mobile manipulator. Our approach uses a powerful combination of two different camera technologies, Time-Of-Flight (TOF) and RGB, to robustly segment the scene and extract object clusters. Using an a-priori database of object models we then perform a CAD matching in 2D camera images. We validate the proposed system in a number of experiments, and compare the system’s performance and reliability with similar initiatives. I.
Pose estimation and adaptive robot behaviour for human-robot interaction
- in Proc. ICRA
"... Abstract — This paper introduces a new method to determine a person’s pose based on laser range measurements. Such estimates are typically a prerequisite for any human-aware robot navigation, which is the basis for effective and time-extended interaction between a mobile robot and a human. The robot ..."
Abstract
-
Cited by 12 (4 self)
- Add to MetaCart
(Show Context)
Abstract — This paper introduces a new method to determine a person’s pose based on laser range measurements. Such estimates are typically a prerequisite for any human-aware robot navigation, which is the basis for effective and time-extended interaction between a mobile robot and a human. The robot uses observed information from a laser range finder to detect persons and their position relative to the robot. This information together with the motion of the robot itself is fed through a Kalman filter, which utilizes a model of the human kinematic movement to produce an estimate of the person’s pose. The resulting pose estimates are used to identify humans who wish to be approached and interacted with. The behaviour of the robot is based on adaptive potential functions adjusted accordingly such that the persons social spaces are respected. The method is tested in experiments that demonstrate the potential of the combined pose estimation and adaptive behaviour approach. I.
